Yesterday, I served as supply at St. John’s Anglican Church in Petaluma, CA, which is the parish who raised me as kid and sponsored me for ordination as a young adult.
When I speak to people I don’t know, I write a manuscript. Since being made a curate (September 2023) and ordained a priest (April 2024), when I have spoken to people I do know, I have been so moved by seeing the faces that I can’t bring myself to write a manuscript.
So below is not a manuscript, but rather a transcription of the homily I preached on Psalm 50:14, generated in mere minutes by Clipto.AI.
What does God want?
Why did He come here? Why did the Father send the Son? And why, after the way that we treated him and received him, would he send him again? Why did he send him again?
Our gospel text this morning has the phrase, the verb, “come,” two times. The first time it describes the terrors that are coming onto the world. Coming, as it were, onto the scene. Things that weren't this way when you were a kid, but now that you're this age, things have come and are here. Jesus' word is this. Straighten up. I'm coming too.
In the Old Testament lesson, we get a wild picture. The Lord comes and stands on top of a mountain. The mountain splits in half. He does battle while straddling two halves of a mountain. A certain set-apart people inhabit the valley that's created between the two parts of the mountain, and water flows from them. Why does God fight? What does he want?
The story of redemption in the scriptures begins, you could say a handful of places, but it begins with a bang when he delivers a people from bondage in Egypt. He sees an entire world order dominated by oppression and darkness. God will deign to call that city a kingdom of darkness. He delivers people from there and says, I am your God. I have set you free, and I alone will be your king. He gives them what we call the Ten Commandments. And the last third of Exodus is taken up with a description of the construction of a tabernacle where he would have them come worship.
As the chapters go on, he'll institute sacrifices, a priesthood, a calendar. The first color it mentions that they make garments for the high priest is the color purple. And we stand in some kind of continuity with that people, celebrating that they are the ones who are the ones who are the ones who are the ones who are the people. Jesus has brought us out of a kingdom of darkness, and he's instituted a church and the rite of the Eucharist, and so forth, by which we remember that, and we worship him. What does God want? Why did he set that up? What does he hope to see when he comes again?
The text I want to spend time in is Psalm. Psalm 50. If you could open up your insert and look at that translation with me.
God wants Thanksgiving
This psalm is also an Advent psalm because of verse 3. Our God shall come. And we can put ourselves in the place of the listeners and the singers of this psalm by asserting in faith with them that our God shall come. And his coming won't be all that mysterious. The day will be unique. When he comes, we don't know. But how he comes, look right here. Our God shall come and shall not keep silence. He has kept silence, but this time he won't. He'll say what's on his mind. Before we hear what he says, we see what it will look like. There shall go before him a consuming fire. And lest that's not clear, the Hebrew word for consume is the word for eat, chomp, or devour. It's a fire that eats.
This is not the first time in the scriptures that this fire has appeared. This fire first appeared in the middle of the book of Leviticus, after the formation of the tabernacle, after the instruction on the sacrifices, after the ordination of the first priests, at the end of chapter 9, at the end of their first formal worship service after leaving Egypt. They do seven things, and seven times it says they did just as the Lord God commanded. In that final verse, it says that the consuming fire of the Lord went forth and ate up the sacrifices they offered. It's a sign of acceptance. The purpose of the worship system that Israel had was so that they could eat with their God.
The second time the consuming fire appears in scripture is just two lines later in the story of the fall of the priesthood. The first two priests, two boys, Nadav and Avihu, the sons of Aaron, offer an unauthorized offering. And immediately, God comes with the consuming fire again and consumes not their offering but them themselves, striking fear into Israel. They'd offered something God had not said. It's not what he wanted. In that moment, God did not keep silent. But now, for the most part, he does. When we offer God to things that are not the things he wants, or not the things he's asked for, he does not, for the most part, unleash a consuming fire. And he won't until he comes again. Listen to what he says about the offerings that his people offer him.
Gather my faithful together unto me. This is a word to the church and to nobody else. Those who have made a covenant with me by sacrifice, the heavens shall declare His righteousness, for God Himself is a judge. Hear, O my people, and I will speak. I Myself will testify. I will testify against you. It's My right. I'm Your God. I will not rebuke You because You fail to make sacrifices or burnt offerings. They are before Me every day. You lift up Your morning prayers. You lift up Your evening prayers. You lift up Your weekly Sabbath offerings.
We come to church on Sunday morning, not like those lazy people who don't, because they're sleeping in, watching football. We come to church on Sunday morning, not like those lazy people. We have this sanctimonious right to say that we are, among the people in the world, those who maintain godly and orderly worship, because we are. Yet this word is for us.
I will take no bull calf out of your house, nor a he-goat out of your folds. Why? Because they're all mine. I have them all. Verse 11, I know them all. I'm looking at them all. If I were hungry, which I'm not, I would not tell you. God the Father does not have a body. He does not need to eat. The Lord God is not a territorial God who needs to assert his dominance over a certain field of industry or a certain area of the world. He's not jealous or competitive in that way. He doesn't need our sweet, sweet words. He doesn't need our saccharine prayers before meals, as if he's placated by being mentioned. He doesn't need it. He has enough. In verse 14, he says what he wants.
The Sacrifice of Thanksgiving
Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows unto the Most High. I want to tell you about those things. Also in the book of Leviticus, there's a sacrifice named there called the thanksgiving sacrifice and right next to it one called the vow offering. And those are the two that are in view right here. These aren't sacrifices that are offered for sin. They're not even sacrifices that are offered by priests. These are sacrifices initiated by any old Israelite who had experienced some concrete act of deliverance from God. They'd gotten a job or they got out of a job. They entered a relationship or they left a relationship. They'd won some victory in battle. Their kid came home. They were healed of something that the prognosis for which was very bad.
God had delivered this person in some way and their response was to offer up what's called the sacrifice of thanksgiving, the sacrifice of praise, the thanksgiving offering. These are all names for it. And the vow offering is just like it. It's what you promise to offer God before he does the thing. So you say, Lord, I lost my job. You love me and you will provide for my family. I know not how. And when you do, I will offer you. I vow to you. I vow to offer you the sacrifice of thanksgiving.
Because, hypothetically, are you a 16-year-old in high school who says, God, if you let me win this baseball game, I swear I will never do blank again. Hypothetically. You win the baseball game and you say, oh boy, I did that. And are we good on our deal? I feel thankful and I've gotten away with not thanking God formally and concretely because I've at least felt it in my heart. The vow offering was a way of paying the tab ahead of time and saying, 'When this happens, I will offer you X.'
The thanksgiving offering had three food components: one whole animal, bread, and wine. Any Israelite could offer it. And the way that their formal right would go is the person who wanted to offer this right would get down on the floor, prostrate themselves on the ground. In front of their friends and family and neighbors, they would sing a song of thanksgiving, praising God for what he had done. If they didn't like their voice or if they had money, they would hire some other Israelite to sing the song for them. A professional singer, as it were. A priest would come to facilitate the actual offering and they would lift up the cup and tell the story of what God had done for them.
Now, the most interesting part of this right to me is the leftover law. This is in direct contradiction to our Thanksgiving tradition. In the American Thanksgiving, we eat our leftovers for days and we beg our guests to take them home. It's a whole American art to transform our Thanksgiving dinner into various kinds of leftovers. Some of you are sandwich people. We are now a white chili household. It's usually white chicken chili, but now it's white turkey chili and it's pretty, it's good. We celebrate what we do with our leftovers, but their leftover law said this. If you consume the leftovers the next day, the whole sacrifice is considered unclean and unacceptable. Even if you intend to eat the leftovers, you can't. What's the significance of this? Deuteronomy 16, verses 11 and 14. You don't need to turn there. You can just trust me or write it down to check my notes later on. Put social pressure on the Israelites to say, you know what you do when you have too much meat? You've offered up a 600-pound animal, a fatted calf, perhaps, that yields 300 pounds of meat, perhaps yielding 600 half-pound portions of brisket, barbecue, and what else? We've got to give it away. You eat some. The priest eats some. Your friends, your family, your neighbors. Then there are people around town who go around jonesing for a meal because they can't afford to feed themselves meat. They're people who only got meat when somebody was thankful for something. This food went out to the poor. You know the story in the New Testament of the king who threw a wedding feast for his son that was under-attended? You know what the issue was? The Thanksgiving offering at the marriage of his son would go bad. So what does the king do? He goes out into the roads to cram his banquet full of all those who are good and who are bad. For what motivation? Because he loves them. Because he loves them? Sure. Because he's showing grace? Sure. Because he wants his son to have a packed wedding? Okay.
They're not paying à la carte. They also got to get rid of all the food. To be a righteous Israelite was to offer up the sacrifice of thanksgiving and to care for your whole community by feeding them. Psalm 50 verse 14 says, Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows unto the Most High. And, in the next line, call upon me in the time of trouble. So will I hear you and you shall praise me.
Perhaps God has delivered you from something recently already and you owe him a thanksgiving. You can work out for yourself how to do that. Perhaps he has not delivered you from something yet and you've been afraid to ask him for it. Ask him. Perhaps you grin and bear it and say, he'll make it all right in the resurrection and I'll just take this pain with me to the grave. No. Call upon God in the time of trouble when the troubles come upon you. When the world turns upside down and He will hear you and He will deliver you, occasioned by that, you will offer up to Him the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Not just by feeling something in your heart but by doing something. Again, I leave it to you to work that out.
I want to end by offering you three portraits of thanksgiving. They won't be very long.
A Sufferer’s Thanksgiving
The first one, the one I want to offer comes from Psalm 22. I'm going to read beginning in verse 22 of Psalm 22. You can turn there if you'd like. This is the psalm that begins with the line, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? David spoke these words and all of Israel spoke these words when it was time to pray them. They became part of their devotional practice. And Jesus, at multiple times throughout his life, prayed these words. And when it all came to a head, the day he died, when he was hanging on the cross, he said the words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And these were recorded to remind us that Jesus thought through this whole psalm and prayed it in some way or other as he hung there. How does this psalm continue? The first 21 verses are sad. Many bulls encompass me. They open wide their mouths at me like a ravening and roaring lion. He looks around and sees a situation as this. These are the words that make sense to him to say.
And in verse 22, the tone shifts. I'll read to you the final 10 verses of the psalm. Listen to the future tense with which he speaks. And listen to the words thanksgiving and vow. Maybe just the word vow. Yeah. I will tell of your name to my brothers. When will he do this? In the midst of the congregation, I will praise you. What does Jesus foresee? You who fear the Lord, praise him. All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him. Stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel. For he has not despised or abhorred the affliction of the afflicted. He has not hidden his face from him, but has heard when he cried him. From you comes my praise in the great congregation. My vows I will perform before those who fear him. The afflicted shall eat and be satisfied. Those who seek Him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever. All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord. And all the families of the nations shall worship before You. For kingship belongs to the Lord, and He rules over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth shall eat and worship. Before Him shall bow all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive. Posterity shall serve Him. It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation. They shall come and proclaim His righteousness to a people yet unborn that He has done it.
What does Jesus imagine from the cross? He imagines a future in which he stands in the midst of a great congregation and pays his vows to God. He says, I know you'll get me through this. I see what's coming on to me. Straighten my neck. God will deliver me, and when he does, I will hold up a cup and I will sing a song and I'll tell the story of what he's done. And all y'all, those who can't keep yourself alive, those who are poor, who've been hurt, you will eat. Two. Why do you think we're here? We're participating in the thanksgiving and the vow offered up by the Lord himself on the cross.
As I've reflected in this first year of being a priest, what it means to be a priest, I love that I cover myself in clothes that are not my street clothes and say words that are not my words and hold up a cup and say the words that Jesus himself said to give you a glimpse Of your Lord, the captain of your salvation, who's making a way for you through death, who hears your cry and delivers you from everything, who invites you to pray the litany from your heart and to ask, will he not do it? That's the first portrait. Those of you who suffer, and those of you who come to church, identify this as the Thanksgiving of the Lord into which he invites you to add your own thanksgiving and your own cry for thanksgiving.
We'll say the prayers of the people. That's a chance for you to pile on your own. We'll have a confession. That's a chance for you to pile on your plea for deliverance from your own sin, and the sins that you've inherited from those who came before you. Pile it on. Imagine yourself with him, for he is here, and he feeds you on his own life, the life that can give you strength to live, and to convey you into the world that will never end. That's the first portrait.
A Father’s Thanksgiving
The second portrait I want to offer is this. It's the story of the prodigal son. You know it. A parent has two children who don't turn out the way he hoped they would. Can you imagine? One's a jerk. One's a fool. The fool leaves. What does the father do? We don't see. But knowing the scriptures, we can fill in the blanks, can't we? He prays night and day. Bring him home. And if he won't, feed him. Give him people who will care for him. I heard that's his friend. To your God, break that friendship. Give him a job, at least. When you do it, I will offer the fatted calf. He keeps his hope so alive and his pain so present in his authentic prayer to God for deliverance. That when he sees his son coming from a long way off, where his son has been is no question to him. What his son has done is no issue. Where the inheritance has gone is a moot point. His elder son is confused.
Then he says this line. Don't you know that we had to celebrate? Why does he have to celebrate? The force of his love for his son, yes. But also his internalization of Psalm 50 and verse 14. Offer unto God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows. To the most high. We had to. What was I going to do? Go on saying morning prayer according to the rites of Thomas Cranmer? Reading my devotional with bits on the Psalms from Tim Keller, and ignore this? This is the thing the angels cheer over. This is what worship is about. This is holding out hope that living a life of faith isn't foolish. That God does things. And before the final resurrection he might just restore the most painful parts of your life. He might deliver you in a way that you could not have expected. Could his father have expected his son of all things to come home?
A Pastor’s Thanksgiving
A third portrait comes from our New Testament lesson. The letter to the Thessalonians. In verse 9 of chapter 3 Paul says, For what thanksgiving can we return to God for you for all the joy that we feel for your sake before our God? What's Paul thankful for? Look back at verse 6, the beginning of the lesson. Now that Timothy has come to us from you and has brought us the good news of your faith and love and reported that you always remember us kindly and long to see us as we long to see you for this reason we have been comforted. And now we live. And what thanksgiving can we offer for that?
What does it mean to be a spiritual father or a pastor? It means that you say the good news but it also means you wait and long for the good news of the ways in which the gospel has taken root in the lives of the people for whom you care. Is Paul being Christ-centered by saying this? That's a confusing question. The good news that stirs Paul's heart for which he gives thanks is the people who I saw when they were still knuckleheads. When they were coping with their pain by gossiping about each other and slandering each other. When they were anxiously making offerings to all sorts of gods. Look at them now. They're full of faith. They're full of love. They love God. They long to see me. I said hard things to them, but they long to see me now? How can I thank God?
As you come to the table today there are people who are giving thanks for what God's done in you. Sure, you are spiritual mothers and fathers and siblings in some way, but there are those who you don't see here. Father David, of course, as he worships this morning who thank God in all their remembrance of you. For what God's done in you.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.